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In one task-switching experiment, we compared bilinguals and monolinguals to explore the reliability of the bilingualism effect on the n-2 repetition cost. In a second task-switching experiment, we tested another group of bilinguals and monolinguals and measured both the n-1 shift cost and the n-2 repetition cost to test the hypothesis that bilingualism should confer a general greater efficiency of the executive control functioning. According to this hypothesis, we expected a reduced n-1 shift cost and an enhanced n-2 repetition cost for bilinguals compared to monolinguals. However, we did not observe such results. Our findings suggest that previous results cannot be replicated and that the n-2 repetition cost is another index that shows no reliable bilingualism effect. Finally, we observed a negative correlation between the two switch costs among bilinguals only. This finding may suggest that the two groups employ different strategies to cope with interference in task-switching paradigms.

The aim of the present study is two-fold. First, we investigate age-related changes to bilingual language control (bLC) mechanisms across lifespan. Second, we explore the relation between bLC mechanisms and those of the domain-general executive (EC) system by looking at age effects on these two systems. To do so, we compare the performances of the three age groups of bilinguals (young, middle-aged and elderly) in a language switching task to those of non-linguistic switching task. We found an age-related change in the non-linguistic switch cost but not in the language switch cost. Moreover, we did not find any correlation between the magnitudes of the switch costs. Taken together these results indicate that bLC is not affected by age as the EC system is, and interestingly, we add new evidence that the bLC mechanisms are not fully subsidiary to those of the domain-general EC system.

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